Classic Poetry

Byron was the ideal of the Romantic poet, gaining notoriety for his scandalous private life and being described by one contemporary as "mad, bad and dangerous to know". Here, Tyrone Power reads a selection of his finest work.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was born in Cockermouth, in the Lake District. His Lyrical Ballads, written in collaboration with Coleridge, was published in 1798, and shortly afterwards he settled in Dove Cottage, Grasmere, with his sister Dorothy. Inspired in his early manhood by the French Revolution, he grew disillusioned with revolutionary politics and in later life became decidedly conservative. He left a vast body of work, ranging from delicately simple lyrics to deeply meditative odes.

Ranier Maria Rilke challenges you, "...to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers." Rilke's ability to combine the sensual and the spiritual into an inspired vision of the art of living is brought to vivid life in his letters. Through his eyes, the everyday difficulties of love, sex, solitude, sadness, and doubt are seen as the archetypal elements of the drama called life.

Written by Thiruvalluvar in Tamil 10,000 years ago, Thirukkural and its Pearls of Wisdom is as relevant today as it was when written. Hence, it is known as a book for all ages. The Thirukkural is a classic Tamil sangam literature consisting of 1,330 couplets or Kurals. The Tirukku is one of the most important works in the Tamil language. This is reflected in some of the other names by which the text known, such as Tami Marai (Tamil Veda), Poyyamozhi (words that never fail) and Deiva Nool (divine text).

Jason and the Golden Fleece is one of the finest tales of Ancient Greece, an epic journey of adventure and trial standing beside similar stories of Perseus, Theseus and the Labours of Heracles. The finest classic account comes from Apollonius of Rhodes, the Greek poet of the 3rd century BCE and librarian at Alexandria. Though less well-known than Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and much shorter, it is an epic poem which is both exciting and moving, with remarkably vivid portraits of the main characters, Jason and Medea.

The spectrum of all of human life, as portrayed in the poem, will unfold with breathtaking variety, drama, thought, and beauty: In the middle of the journey of our life / I found myself in a dark wood, where the straight path was lost. The process of listening to Dante’s Comedy is a journey into not just literature but into the mysteries of human nature and its capacity for unhappiness and happiness, folly and wisdom, rejection and wonder over the miracles of creation and existence.

Young children can spy familiar nursery characters hiding in this tale. There's Tom Thumb, Jack and Jill, and the Three Bears as well as Baby Bunting and a host of others.

The US edition of the bestselling The Poetry Pharmacy A beautiful collection of curated poems each individually selected to provide hope, comfort, and inspiration—for all of life's most difficult moments Sometimes only a poem will do. These poetic prescriptions and wise words of advice are...

Sir Ralph Richardson reads a selection of poetry by John Keats, William Blake and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The sonnets are a collection numbering 154 poems dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty, and mortality. They were probably written over a long period of Shakespeare's life up until 1609, when they were first printed. The first 17 poems, traditionally referred to as the "procreation sonnets", are addressed to a young man urging him to marry and have children in order to immortalize his beauty by passing it on to his descendants.

William Cowper was born 26th November 1731 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. Traumatically he and his brother, John, were the only siblings, out of seven, to survive infancy. His mother died when he was six. In 1763 he was offered a Clerkship of Journals in the House of Lords. With the examinations approaching, Cowper had a mental breakdown. He tried to commit suicide three times, and a period of depression and insanity seemed to settle on him. The end of this unhappy period saw him finding refuge in evangelical Christianity, becoming the inspiration behind his much-loved hymns.

The epic story of this hero’s battle against dragons, monsters, and their mothers is particularly suited to being recorded as an audiobook given that for the first 300 years of its existence it was only ever spoken. The first known (and indeed the only surviving manuscript) of the poem was written in AD 1,000. It survived Henry VIII’s attempts to destroy it (as a religious artifact) and a catastrophic fire that destroyed many other historical British documents.

With classics such as ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ Robert Browning’s status as one of the great Victorian poets will always be secure in popular culture, while for the more literary he is considered a master of dramatic verse and dramatic monologues. It is interesting to note that his career bloomed late. Indeed, it was only after the death of his wife Elizabeth in 1861 and his return to England from their life in Italy that his work came into wider acceptance and critical acclaim.

What starts with young Jim Hawkins meeting a beggar and ends in a climactic battle between him and one of the most infamous villains in literature — Long John Silver — has long been revered as the ultimate pirate adventure story. This non - dramatized classic will sweep you off to a world of sly and savvy seafarers as the young Hawkins navigates treachery, assassination and the ominous prophecy of the black spot in the greatest treasure hunt known to literature.

“A Child’s Garden of Verses” includes 15 sweet rhyming poems paired with beautiful music. Included are “At the Seaside,” “Autumn Fires,” “The Swing,” “The Land of Nod,” and more! A perfect way to encourage early literacy skills, the rhyming verses will soon become a family favorite.

The Song of Roland is acknowledged today as the first masterpiece of French vernacular literature and one of the world’s greatest epic poems. Written down around the year 1090, The Song of Roland finely crafted verses tell of the betrayal and defeat of Charlemagne’s beloved nephew at the Pass of Roncevaux in the Pyrenees and of the revenge subsequently sought on his behalf.

A collection of recordings written and read by one of the greatest literary and cultural figures of the 20th. The collection is accompanied by a special 64 page booklet containing the poems. Upon the release of his first published work, Howl and Other Poems (1956), Allen Ginsberg became the...

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a collection of 45 poems by English poet William Blake. "Songs of Innocence" is the first part of the collection and appeared in 1789 with engraved illustrations by Blake. The second part, "Songs of Experience", also illustrated, was added in 1794 when Blake published the whole under the full title of Songs of Innocence and Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.

In Stephen Mitchell's The Iliad, the epic story resounds again across 2,700 years, as if the lifeblood of its heroes Achilles and Patroclus, Hector, and Priam flows in every word. And we are there with them, amid the horror and ecstasy of war, carried along by a poetry that lifts even the most devastating human events into the realm of the beautiful. Mitchell's The Iliad is the first translation based on the work of the preeminent Homeric scholar Martin L. West.

This varied, well-chosen selection brings onto one audiobook the best of Dylan Thomas. Here is the legendary recording of "Under Milk Wood", with Richard Burton and Richard Bebb as narrators; but here also are two radio productions he wrote before that great classic, and though interesting in their own right, they show how "Under Milk Wood" grew gradually in his imagination.